Type of Travel Guide #6: Expat Travel Guide

Types of Travel Guide #6 Expat Travel Guide

All about The Expat Travel Guide

In this article we’re going to look at the definition of an Expat travel guide, and look at examples of published guides available.

More and more people are abandoning their home countries and relocating to a new destination, and yet more are becoming digital nomads who navigate through a string of countries without ever planning on settling down in a single destination long-term.

The beauty of this one-size doesn’t fit all, means that you can craft an Expat travel guide that speaks to a specific reader and the journey ahead of them. It doesn’t matter how many other expat guides there are available, you will be able to identify a gap in the marketplace and carve out an audience niche for your guide.

Definition of an Expat Travel Guide

Expat Travel guides can focus on the acclamation process of settling in a new destination told from a narrative perspective, or presented as a How To guide. They can focus on providing help and insights before a move and be instrumental in the decision making process, or they can focus on helping expats settle into their new life, once they’ve already arrived at their chosen destination.

Narrative Expat Travel Guide

Expat Memoirs are a common writing category. Many of them focus on the dramas and dilemmas people faced when relocating to another country, and usually include cultural observations and the challenges of integrating into the local community.

If these narratives focus on the entertainment or inspiration value of relocating, then they’re firmly embedded in the travel memoir niche, but if these expats stories also include information about how readers can make their own move to the same destination, then that’s when these books edge over into the travel guide niche. It all boils down to how much information is shared, and the intended role of the book.

How To Expat Travel Guide

The How To guide focuses strongly on sharing tips, advices and additional resources aimed at helping other expats to make the same move. Before I left Los Angeles to relocate to Turkey, I read a lot of expat travel guides about moving to Greece, Spain, and Turkey. Some of the guides sugar-coat the experience, and others are full of woe and warnings. But the guides I found most useful were the ones that presented both sides of the equation and nudged me towards making my own mind up about my move.

Some How To guides focus on being a reference guide prior to a move, and others are a designed as a manual to help expats settle into their new destination.

Here’s a selection of How To travel guides about moving to Costa Rica, which includes independently published travel guides as well as a Moon Travel Guide version. This is just a small selection of books on the Costa Rica escape plan topic, but Belinda Maddux has targeted her book at Retirees to differentiate her book from others in the niche.

I am part of the volunteer organization called WoMentoring, and last year I mentored a couple of expats who had made Singapore their home. I helped them self-publish their Expats’ Guide to Singapore, aimed at expats trying to find their feet in their adopted home.

What we learned through the process is that the first version of an Expat travel guide can take a lot of work to finesse, and almost as soon as it’s published, it needs updating. Self-publishing your expat travel guide is the best path to publication, because you can update the ebook and print-on-demand versions of your book without too much effort.

Considerations When Planning an Event Specific Travel Guide

Expats some in all shapes and sizes. They may be a lone traveler looking to relocate to a new country to start a new life, a family with small children who are relocating for a new job, or empty-nesters looking to downsize and enjoy a slower pace of life. So if you’re in a position to write an Expat Travel guide, it’s important that you identify your target audience, so that the content you create speaks to a specific audience niche.

These travel guides will also need to be updated regularly, especially the How To travel guides. It’s difficult to write one of these guides, unless you’ve been through the process first hand, and have your finger on the pulse of the legal and cultural changes happening in the destination country.

Want to learn about the other types of travel guides? Here’s the full list of this article series:

In addition to these articles, I also wrote the following articles about writing a Local Travel Guide (which is a sub-genre of special interest travel guides):

Want to know more about the Event Specific #travelguide niche? Here's some tips when you're planning and writing your book. #amwriting Click To Tweet

If you’re a travel blogger who wants to turn their travel blog into an ebook or paperback destination guide, leave me a comment below.